Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an appliance for the smoothing of shirts, in particular, for smoothing the ends of the shirt sleeves and the cuffs, the shirt collar, and the button tapes.
According to a prior art method, shirts are smoothed by being fixed at various points and being inflated, in particular, by warmed air and tensioned, while the shirt may, additionally, be drawn apart at the fixed points.
In another method for the smoothing of shirts, an inflatable swelling bag is used, around which the shirt is disposed. In such a case, the shirt does not have to be fixed because the swelling bag holds it. The cuffs, are in these cases, smoothed by sleeve portions of the swelling bag. When a swelling bag is used, it is known to fix the button tape and also the sleeves or the collar of the shirt to be smoothed so as not to have to button it up, as is disclosed, for example, from U.S. Pat. No. 3,165,244 to Dosal.
When such a swelling bag is used, however, there is the problem that, although the surface of the swelling bag is warmed uniformly by the warmed air flowing in, nevertheless, individual points on a shirt to be smoothed, at which thicker material is used or the material is a multi-ply, such as, for example, the cuffs, the collar, or the button tape, are not sufficiently smoothed because the warmed air cannot generate sufficient warmth at these points. Likewise, however, a more pronounced warming of the air to be supplied or a longer treatment of the shirt to be smoothed would lead, inter alia, to an overloading of the shirt in the remaining regions.